I'm Thankful for Lots of Things

It's a good day for pausing, for looking around, and being quietly grateful for things. Things, conditions, actions. Oneself. Others.

It's a good day to share those items of gratitude, too. For taking a step out of our mundane lives. Maybe connecting this with that.

I'm grateful my mundane life supports my Phil Strobe habit. That the people, jobs, technology, and education I've been given, earned, and lucked into have teamed up to allow me to do something in my life that I enjoy deeply.

It's a pretty self-directed thing to be feel grateful for. I'm grateful for you, my readers like a handful of marbles. I'm grateful that you have leisure enough to give me some of your time. Life is a tough game. Lots of people have it astronomically tougher than I have. I suspect many of my readers have it tougher than I have it, and that many put in long days or nights helping people who have it tougher still. I'm grateful you feel my work is a good, useful, diversion. 

Still sounds pretty self-serving, I think. But gratitude is a pretty self-directed feeling. It gives you a moment to place yourself in conscious relation with the world around you. Gratitude is a challenging feeling, being about the self, but also demanding engagement with the rest of the world with a silent look asking if you're right with things. Like a Aunt whose love for you often takes the form of a silent look.

Be grateful for those Aunts.